by Henry Brinton , USA TODAY

by Henry Brinton , USA TODAY

At a Pennsylvania toy factory, President Obama warned that falling off the fiscal cliff would create "a Scrooge Christmas." Obama linked his political opponents to the miser in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, who was born 200 years ago. Although the English author is not easily aligned with either of our political parties, he might surprise us if he were to write about our fiscal drama.

Dickens was a perceptive social critic who blasted the "non-working aristocracy" and "silent Parliament" of his day, groups that Michael Feingold of The Village Voice has connected to America's "overprivileged 1%" and "deadlocked Congress." In the magazine Household Words, Dickens described his fellow citizens as "everybody for himself and nobody for the rest." But a reading of his Christmas Carol reveals that Dickens did not consider big government to be the cure-all to social problems.

At the beginning of the story, Scrooge is asked by several gentlemen to make a contribution to help the poor and destitute at Christmas. The miser responds, "Are there no prisons? ... And the union workhouses? ... Are they still in operation? ... The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then? ... I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. â?¦ I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

Who's paying for it?

Prisons, union workhouses, the treadmill and the Poor Law: These were the government programs of 19th century England, and Scrooge supported them with his tax dollars. Some were awful programs to be sure -- welfare applicants had to work on treadmills to generate power -- but they were society's ways of dealing with the poor.

Dickens grew up in poverty and worked in a boot-polish factory as a child, an experience that caused him to have lifelong sympathy for the poor, especially those who were victims of industrial capitalism. But as an adult, he was a businessman who wanted to make as much money as he possibly could. His novels had moral purpose, religious themes and hard-working virtuous characters. Many conservatives today would applaud the personal transformation of Scrooge into a loving and generous person.

Even so, Dickens would not agree that there is an inherent good in holding on to money, which underlies Republican resistance to raising taxes on the rich. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge -- who is described as "an excellent man of business" -- says to his nephew, "What right have you to be merry? â?¦ You're poor enough."

The nephew replies, "What right have you to be dismal? â?¦ You're rich enough." Money does not buy happiness, a truth that seems to be lost on the Americans who recently bought $563 million Powerball jackpot tickets, despite the odds of winning being 1 in 175 million.

'Mankind was my business'

Dickens saw the pitfalls of greed, and understood that good business went beyond the success of the private sector. When the ghost of Scrooge's business partner Jacob Marley appears, he is wrapped in a chain of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds and heavy purses wrought in steel. "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," says Scrooge.

"Business!" cries the ghost, wringing its hands. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

When facing the fiscal cliff, our leaders need to remember that supporting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all part of the "comprehensive ocean" of America's business.

Avoiding the fiscal cliff is going to require compromise from both sides, based on the fact that we are all in this together. In the words of Scrooge's nephew, this is the season for people to "open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Too often we see each other as liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, poor and rich, and consider each other to be "another race of creatures."

But the fact is that we are "fellow passengers to the grave," and we need to address our nation's complex problems with a focus on both individual responsibility and social justice, just as Dickens would.

Henry Brinton is pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia and author of The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality.

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